I understand the SETI@home/BOINC back-end is a bit confusing. I think there are only a handful of people who understand all the relationships between every step of the BOINC finite state machine, the SETI@home data pipeline, and every server in our closet. I can only really scratch the surface of these details during these relatively pithy missives.

So let me try my best to quickly answer the general question: "did those two brand new servers (oscar and carolyn) help?"

First of all, there are about 100 known problems with our systems at any given time. Most of these are low priority and "time out" on their own. There are still a bunch of high priority issues, of which these new servers addressed *some*.

One easy problem to fix was replacing mork (the randomly crashing master mysql database server) with carolyn. This has been great... and I think we just (as of this morning) solved the current batch of disk i/o problems (by properly tweaking the write cache settings). Carolyn also has a lot more disks and memory than mork had, so there's still a lot of room to grow as needed.

The other new server, oscar, is taking care of two major problems. First, the science database on thumper was abysmally slow - so now this is on oscar. That's great, however it's not running as fast as we'd like. We still haven't fully benchmarked this, though. Maybe at worst we'll need to add more disks to the system - we shall see. The second major problem oscar is helping to resolve is ptolemy - our internal administrative file server - which, like mork, also randomly crashes from time to time locking everything up. Now that thumper is off the hook as a science database server, it can take over and easily handle ptolemy's current functionality, and then we can retire ptolemy. There's actually a third minor problem that's also getting fixed: thumper's root partition is on a messed-up software RAID device which kinda works but has been scaring us for way too long. It'll be great to have this server-shuffle opportunity to have a quiet moment to reinstall the OS on thumper and fix that RAID.

But that's pretty much it for now. Other major problems exist with no clear solutions. In fact, many of them are data driven, or network infrastucture driven, and therefore out of our sysadmin hands - no server upgrades will solve them.

That said, I hardly want to sound hopeless (and definitely not ungrateful). We're pros at working through our various struggles, and gaining oscar and carolyn has been the largest improvement in years, with still more benefits to come as we get rolling full bore in the new year and more aggressively shake out the remaining configuration problems. Plus a third new donated server (synergy) is coming down the pike, which we'll use to address other current shortcomings. When oscar, carolyn, and synergy are all being used to their fullest potential (a month or two from now?) let's revisit what our biggest system needs are. It may very well be that these new machines did in fact shake out the bulk of our current issues, and we'll be in good shape for years to come.

Happy new year! May we have actually publishable results in 2011 - positive or negative I don't care - it's science either way. We certainly could stand to get something meaningful in the journals concerning all the data we've been reducing for 11 years.

- Matt
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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Sounds like S@h is doing pretty well on its firm diet of shoe strings. Congrats one and all for all your work
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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

When oscar, carolyn, and synergy are all being used to their fullest potential (a month or two from now?) let's revisit what our biggest system needs are. It may very well be that these new machines did in fact shake out the bulk of our current issues, and we'll be in good shape for years to come.

That is good enough for me Matt. Thanks for telling it like it is, without any waffle, that is what we need to hear. Get yourselves sorted, then let us know what is needed next, and we will see what we can do about it.

With all of the good work you have done this year with less than "stellar" equipment, I hope that the project leaders have seen fit to give you a year end performance reward. I know that you are not in this for the $, but with what you have managed to do this year, there should be something for you. Maybe there is some kibble for you somewhere. If not, then you are building up one heck of a positive karma.

Just to repeat everyone else, thanks for the post Matt. It's nice knowing what's up behind the scenes when possible. It's a lot of hard pain in the butt work at time and most of us know it, but rarely recognize it. Typical IT department stuff I suppose, always gets taken for granted! Either way nice job fellas, have an enjoyable new years and come in fresh for the 2011 year! It's going to be a hell of a ride.
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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!